Mashrabaمشربة

المُذَكَّر وَالمُؤَنَّثMasculine and feminine

al-mudhakkar wa-l-muʾannath

Grammatical gender governs agreement. Some of Ibn ʿArabī's key nouns are feminine (ḥikma, kalima, ṣūra, nafs, ʿayn) and the verbs and pronouns that refer to them follow; this often decides who 'she' is in a difficult sentence.

The words behind the terms

In the texts (431 occurrences; 24 distinct shown)

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Quranic Arabic CorpusAutomatic analysis · CAMeL Tools

Reference

In the classics5 books · disputed · definitions
  • Qaṭr al-nadāIbn HishāmChapter on number: from three to nine, the number is always put in the feminine with a masculine noun and in the masculine with a feminine nounChapter: The Factors That Prevent a Noun from Taking Full Declension (ṣarf) Are Nine
  • The AlfiyyaIbn MālikThe Diptote: Nouns That Do Not Take Ṣarf (vv. 649–675)Numerals (vv. 726–745)The Feminine (vv. 758–770)with Ibn ʿAqīl's commentary under each verse
  • Shudhūr al-dhahabIbn HishāmThe nine impediments to full declension (diptotes)Numerals: gender agreement and the specifying noun
  • Mughnī al-labībIbn Hishāmالتاءالهاء
  • Sībawayh, al-KitābSībawayhFeminine -h endings
  • DisputedIbn al-Anbārī, al-Inṣāf
    • Why do ṭāliq (‘divorced’), ḥāʾiḍ and ḥāmil (‘pregnant’) have no feminine ending?Kufa: the quality belongs to women alone · Basra: they are relational: ‘one with divorce’, not a verb-like adjective · he sides with Basra

      Question 111: مسألة القول في المؤنث بغير علامة تأنيث ما على زنة اسم الفاعل

      ذهب الكوفيون إلى أن علامة التأنيث إنما حذفت من نحو طالق وطامث وحائض وحامل لاختصاص المؤنث به

      KufaThe Kufans held that the feminine sign was left off ṭāliq, ṭāmith, ḥāʾiḍ and ḥāmil because these belong to the feminine alone. al-Inṣāf, lines 8375–8376 (vol. 2, p. 758) ↗

      وذهب البصريون إلى أنه إنما حذفت منه علامة التأنيث لأنهم قصدوا به النسب

      BasraThe Basrans held that the feminine sign was left off because they meant it as a relation [‘one having’]. al-Inṣāf, line 8377 (vol. 2, p. 758) ↗

      VerdictHe gives the Basran proofs, then answers the Kufans’ arguments one by one; that is how he sides with Basra:

      وأما الجواب عن كلمات الكوفيين

      As for the answer to the Kufans' arguments… al-Inṣāf, line 8467 (vol. 2, p. 777) ↗

      English: AI translation The summary lines are ours.

      Ibn al-Anbārī (d. 577/1181), al-Inṣāf fī masāʾil al-khilāf bayna al-naḥwiyyīn al-Baṣriyyīn wa-l-Kūfiyyīn, ed. Muḥammad Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr; year not recorded by OpenITI). Digital text: 0577AbuBarakatAnbari.InsafFiMasail.JK001424-ara1 (OpenITI RELEASE v2025.1.9). CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (OpenITI digital text); the classical text is public domain, the modern edition is not.

  • al-Jurjānī, al-Taʿrīfāt · 3 definitions

    • المذكر: خلاف المؤنث، وهو ما خلا من العلامات الثلاث: التاء، والألف، والياء.

      The masculine [al-mudhakkar]: the opposite of the feminine; it is that which is free of the three markers: tāʾ, alif, and yāʾ.

      OpenITI · Taʿrīfāt, line 4170

    • المؤنث اللفظي: ما فيه علامة التأنيث لفظا، نحو ضاربة، وحبلى، وحمراء، أو تقديرا، وهو التاء، نحو: أرض، تردها في التصغير، نحو: أريضة.

      The formally feminine [al-muʾannath al-lafẓī]: that which contains a feminine marker, either overtly, as ḍāriba, ḥublā, and ḥamrāʾ, or by assumption, this being the tāʾ, as arḍ, which you restore in the diminutive, as urayḍa.

      OpenITI · Taʿrīfāt, line 4818

    • المؤنث الحقيقي: ما بإزائه ذكر من الحيوان، كامرأة وناقة، وغير الحقيقي ما لم يكن كذلك بل يتعلق بالوضع والاصطلاح، كالظلمة، والأرض، وغيرهما.

      The truly feminine [al-muʾannath al-ḥaqīqī]: that which has a male counterpart among animals, such as imraʾa 'woman' and nāqa 'she-camel'. The non-true feminine [ghayr al-ḥaqīqī] is that which is otherwise and depends on coinage [al-waḍʿ] and convention [al-iṣṭilāḥ], such as al-ẓulma 'darkness', al-arḍ 'the earth', and others.

      OpenITI · Taʿrīfāt, line 4820

Arabic texts from OpenITI (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0); English titles and translations are AI. All the classics →

Further reading1 work